11 April 2016

I was recently in the market for a good quote for a talk I was asked to
give. So I started doing my research and found more than I bargained
for. Unfortunately I can't bombard my listeners with all the great
quotes I found, so, instead, I intend to bombard the reader. Go
forth at your own risk.

On the act of writing:

“Sit
down and put down everything that comes into your head and then
you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's
worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

Colette

“I've
always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two
people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry
and only half the royalties.”

Agatha
Christie

“Nothing
you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you
first hoped.”

Lillian Hellman

“All
books are either dreams or swords. You can cut or you can drug with
words.”

Amy
Lowell

“Looking
back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But far
better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

Katherine
Mansfield

“The
difference between a story and a painting or photograph is that in a
story you can write, 'He's still alive.' But in a painting or a
photo you can't show “still.” You can just show him being
alive.”

Susan
Sontag

“There
is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written
or badly written. That is all.”

Oscar
Wilde

“The
art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the
seat of the chair.”

Mary
Heaton Vorse

*Note:
I have also seen this quote attributed to Ernest Hemmingway.

“Writing
a book is like scrubbing an elephant: there's no good place to begin
or end, and it's hard to keep track of what you've already covered.”

Anon.

“The
answers you get from literature depend upon the questions you pose.”

Margaret
Atwood

On
the consequences of writing:

“It
is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly
sane.”

Margaret
Anderson

“I
was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman
could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.”

Lydia
M. Child

“A
person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his
pants down.”

Edna
St. Vincent Millay

On
the opinions of others:

“This
is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with
great force.”

Dorothy
Parker

“Nothing
stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”

Sylvia
Plath

“The
more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.”

Anon.

On
criticism:

“There
is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so
much from critics and publishers in this.”

C.N.
Bovee

“What
I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

Logan
Pearsall Smith

“Every
author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a
madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

Logan
Pearsall Smith

“Authors
are partial to their wit, 'tis true,

But
are not critics to their judgment too?”

Alexander
Pope

“Criticism
is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small
expense.”

Samuel
Johnson

“People
ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”

W.
Somerset Maugham

What
are some of your favorite quotes about writing, authors, books,
criticism, etc.? Maybe that's something we all, we writers, can reach for -- to be quoted some day. Would that be cool, or what?